


Cocoon

by deepandlovelydark



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, Non-Graphic Smut, no harm done to a certain fluffy winged bat, or the player for that matter, pwp with textiles, the sigil for sun's heat on a comet's tail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:01:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22178212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: ...should you happen to fail tonight's venture, the merest trifling occurrence for Veils in this history of five cities and untold years, no harm done you barring this: the simple shame of mundanity.Whereas success means law and light and correspondence enough to flay the moisture from your bones ten times over, a monument to your pride written in ash, and that fate's only slightly preferable.How then, to thread this needle?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Cocoon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mechabre (tender_anaphylaxis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tender_anaphylaxis/gifts).



...white taffeta, for healing.

He whimpers as you make the first neat incision, a ratwork needle of such fine and clever make that no further ichor leeches out to mar the delicate cloth. This stuff's not meant for the Bazaar, not even the choicest spirals of the side-street. Every Master hugs their eager heart-desire close, decrying all else as too tawdry even to ban; this alien joy had to be smuggled from a very particular nowhere, a city so audacious as to reject the proffered bargain. No whisper of its name may be spoken from here to far Arbor.

You have enough to make carpets of the stuff, if there wasn't a better purpose. All too soon the wing is finished, enrobed and tied off with amaranth ribbons of finest Parabola flax. Very fetching it looks; but too frail to move, too weak for flight. 

Another layer then, of material unhallowed and homespun. Zee-captains of a very particular standing know which isle it is where the shepherds will countenance no visitors, want no better fortune than their coarse, unruly flocks. A seeker might lose limbs to those snapping jaws and uncloven hooves, just acquiring the slightest wisp.

Here you have it by the bale. Try not to smile so. 

Stitching, tugging, weaving, wafting. A few yards more of linen stitches that will evaporate in dreams, and all's ready for the velvet. 

Impossibly pure. Subtile. Shivering through your hands with the impatience of desire; it knows its own place, stretches itself most fondly and abjectly- and not over the wound.

Over yourself. Tugging with a playfulness at once playful and brutal, rubbing its nape against the silk of your waistcoat, the small of your throat. Curling itself around smooth curves of bone, running up your back, smothering you with animal grace as you seize and slice and impale.

(There is nothing like this on the surface. There never will be. What vitality can they have up there without the awareness of this fight, without the battle lust apportioned to every smallest thread?) 

Half a candle has burned away before you come to yourself again, work done. A mercy you haven't sewn yourself into that sleek, billowing blackness... 

...and a Master of the Bazaar stands before you. Untrammeled, quite unrecognisable from the pitiable bleeding wreck that entered your chambers. 

"I confess myself...contented. You may expect another such visit."

Let the Sixth City fall, then. Let London hang, the Mountain rise, the lacre boil. 

What boots any of that chaos, against the satisfaction of a single silver needle?


End file.
